Friday Muse: Windows 7 - I’m Buying In…

I have to tell you that after the release of Windows Vista and all of the ensuing problems – I was more than a little skeptical when Windows 7 was released. All of the rumors of incompatible hardware and software, lofty system requirements, no direct migration from Windows XP were my main concerns, just to name a few. Basically, I suspected that once again Microsoft may have laid and egg wrt it’s desktop operating system, so I moved forward very cautiously. The Deerfield offices would just have to live on XP for awhile longer.

I am a very mobile person, and as such have a number of laptops in my life. My “MO” so far in my professional life has been to leave a breadcrumb trail of laptop computers in various places that I frequent. This for me has been a little more convenient than dragging around the ultimate “power portable” everywhere I go. What this means however, is that I have laptops that are still in service that I purchased in 2002 and are based upon the Pentium 4 and Celeron processors with 512MB to 1GB of RAM. So – relative to Windows 7, if the hardware compatibility wasn't an issue the processor power and RAM was.

So – I was at a point with a couple of the machines thinking that they were ready for the recycling center. Running XP is almost not-serviceable on these machines any more – even with the OS’s pared down to the bare minimum. The reason is because XP has been service patched so many times over its life time by MS, that just the bare vanilla OS with an anti-virus installed practically consumes all of the system resources, and basically results in a slow pig of a machine.

Having nothing to lose and also as a result of some positive experiences with other machines of a little better capability, I decided to try loading Windows 7 on these 2 particular machines just for grins. To my surprise, even the Celeron with 512MB performs fairly well! One thing that I am geeked about is that Windows 7 (and Vista before it) has a feature called “ReadyBoost” that allows you to use an inexpensive USB drive as a virtual cache, that helps speed up machines with limited RAM installed (btw – the 512MB machine and the 1GB machine were at their memory maximum, so their RAM could not be expanded). I purchased 2 Kingston 8GB USB drives for about $24 a piece from the local Kmart, and plugged them into both of these machines.

Just so you know – I installed Windows 7 Enterprise N on these machines form our MSDN subscription. Once the initial install was completed it was onto the hardware drivers issues. Guess what? with little effort both machines work in full screen resolution, and all drives, network, wireless, ports, and panel controls work. This was almost unbelievable considering neither manufacturer has Windows Vista, or Windows 7 drivers available for these machines. However some of the devices did not come to life until after the first time I ran Windows Update on them. So – basically on stock drivers provided by MS – these old boat anchors are working fairly well! What I did lose on both machines was the ability to put them in “sleep” mode. They will shutdown properly, and can also be hibernated - I am sure this has something to do with the implementation of ACPI in these machines. To be quite honest – sleep never worked properly with XP on them either. But – I thought that it was a small price to pay for another breath of life into these machines that were about to be set out to pasture.

One more thing – I was not able to “upgrade” windows, but had to perform a “custom installation” which is basically a clean install with the exception that your existing data and folders are intact with the exception of your old Windows folder structure that get renamed to Windows.old.

So – if you have some old machines in your life that are at least P4/Celeron or above and you feel adventurous, give it a go! you might actually be pleased with the result. MS has made me a believer in Windows again. Here’s the hoot. I’m actually writing this from a car dealership waiting lobby on my MacBook Pro via a Remote Desktop connection to a machine at the office so I can access Windows Live Writer (the best offline blogging tool PC, or Mac). You got all of that right?

Windows 7 - It was my idea ;)

IceWarp Training and Webinar Videos

As a longtime partner and IceWarp Distributor, one of the things that I really admire is how well of a job IceWarp does conducting webinars on the various subjects of email server administration. Mail server administration is not for the faint of heart, and a good collection of resources is (still today) difficult to find.

The IceWarp webinars have been archived by IceWarp and made available to those that were not able to attend the live events. The current archive contain about 25 or so webinars covering topics from anti-spam best practices to mobile synchronization.

The webinars are specific to IceWarp Server (formerly Merak MailServer and VisNetic MailServer), however the information contained within each would be beneficial to almost any email administrator.

There are also some upcoming webinars that you may be interested in attending live, however if this does not fit your schedule they will be archived on this site for viewing at a later date.

The complete listing of archived webinars can be found here. Enjoy and happy viewing!

IceWarp Releases IceWarp DeskClient Beta

New Beta serves as a secure Outlook replacement – Optimized for IceWarp Server

IceWarp has extended its offerings recently to include a new desktop client that will provide users an option to the ever-growing, performance zapping MS Outlook. IceWarp DeskClient is universal in that it supports any standards-based email server, however it is optimized for IceWarp Server. Personally, I really welcome this as I have been increasingly dissatisfied with MS Outlook. The Outlook interface and functionality is nice, however it really comes at a price in terms of system requirements and cost. Keep in mind that the only means to acquire Outlook is to purchase MS Office.

IceWarp DeskClient integrates Email, GroupWare, secure Instant Messaging, and much more. It is extremely flexible, providing the power to adjust the interface to meet the unique needs of your organization. Whether you are migrating from MS Outlook or from an open-source alternative, IceWarp DeskClient provides organizations with all the features users need and expect.

Calendar Interface

IceWarp DeskClient is one of the most comprehensive interfaces on the market, giving users the ability to simultaneously view multiple calendars across multiple sources. Plus, DeskClient offers support for both Free/Busy and iMIP/iTIP, which gives users the power to check the availability of colleagues and schedule meetings.

Optimized for IceWarp Server

IceWarp DeskClient is optimized to fully interact with IceWarp Server, ensuring easy setup and seamless synchronization of all data. Plus, users will be able to share all data; they simply need to fill in their user names and passwords, and the client will exchange all necessary settings with your server via SmartDiscover.

Integrated IM client

IceWarp's integrated IM client enables communication between users and groups. Features include privacy lists, avatars and customizable notifications. Chat history is logged in real-time, and is displayed in the Sidebar or can be opened in a separate window. By default, the IceWarp IM client is docked in IceWarp's intelligent Sidebar; however, each user has the option to detach it.

Revolutionary Taskbar

A powerful search engine quickly locates all information within the client. Full communication and attachment history ensures that all past conversations and projects are preserved whether they're done through Instant Messaging or e-mail.

Data import

The integrated import engine supports full import from MS Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Live Mail or any .eml file. Contacts and Calendars can also be imported from iCalendar (.ics) or vCards (.vcf). Additionally, Contacts can be imported from Google or Facebook.

The current beta of IceWarp DeskClient can be downloaded here.

Is E-Mail Dead? Not So Fast!

Since 2006, pundits have been predicting the death of e-mail. The word on the street is that people--particularly under 30s--have abandoned e-mail for IM, texting, Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Jim Lodico, author of the Social Media 2.0 blog, summarizes the reasons most often given for e-mail's demise (among them: too slow, takes too much time, too much spam).

But new research suggests it may be too early to give e-mail last rites. In "View from the Social Inbox 2010," Merkle, a customer relations marketing agency, finds that time spent with personal or social e-mail in the fall of 2009 was even with the prior year. "Nearly three-quarters of respondents spent at least 20 minutes a week e-mailing friends and family." What's more, Merkle found that social network users check their inboxes more frequently than those who shun social sites. "Forty-two percent of social networkers check their e-mail account four or more times a day, compared to just 27% of their non-networked counterparts."

Merkle's findings were similar to those reported by The Nielsen Company in "Is Social Media Impacting How Much We Email?" Nielsen also found that social media use makes people consume more e-mail, not less.  In part, that's because you can choose to get an e-mail every time a friend comments on a posting or engages in an activity. And as people make connections though social media, they "may extend those connections to e-mail."

The prediction that social media will kill e-mail reminds me of the premature death notices that accompany nearly every new technology: TV will kill radio, videos will kill movies. Most times, old technologies survive by changing. (Do you want to see Avatar on video at home or in 3-D on a big screen at the theater?)

Communications consultant Flora Novarra, commenting on Lodico's post, makes a succinct case for e-mail's survival. "Would you really want to get your bank statement through your social network? Would you want a tweet from your ex arranging weekend visitation?"

New technologies simply give people more choices.

--Marilynne Rudick

(c) E-WRITE, 2004 - 2010.

Marilynne Rudick and Leslie O'Flahavan are partners in E-WRITE, a training and consulting company that specializes in writing for online readers. Rudick and O'Flahavan are authors of Clear, Correct, Concise E-Mail: A Writing Workbook for Customer Service Agents

Integrating 3CX with Kerio Connect 7 for Unified Messaging

One of the great allures of an IP PBX is the promise and delivery of a single unified messaging (UM) inbox for its users.  What this means in the context of 3CX Phone System for Windows and Kerio Connect 7 deployed together, is a single repository (inbox) where both voice mail message (VM’s) and email coexist.  From the UM inbox, users are able to either read their email, or review and listen to their VM’s.  Combining 3CX and Kerio Connect will inexpensively and effectively do just that for those that wish to deploy these two products together.

By combining 3CX with Kerio Connect 7 users are able to have email with full groupware capabilities compatible with native support for Outlook MAPI / IMAP/POP3 / ActiveSync, SyncML, iCal, CalDav and a host of network-based, or over-the-air synchronization at no extra cost.  Kerio Connect 7 also comes with a sweet webmail client that can be used as a desktop replacement for email clients like MS Outlook.  Kerio Connect is cross-platform and is available in Windows, Mac, and Linux, costs much less that MS Exchange – and is ease as easy as apple pie to administer.  It also contains very good support for Mac and Linux clients as well.  If you are using Kerio Connect with 3CX – it does not matter what OS Kerio is running on, 3CX will talk to it just fine.  It also does not matter what client is connecting – Windows, Mac, or Linux.  Of course 3CX will be running on a Windows server itself as it is made for Windows only currently.  One note is that Windows users will also enjoy the benefits of the 3CX Assistant, a desktop application that puts all of the call control (hold, transfer, answer, hang up, etc) in a slick drag-n-drop interface.  Recently however, 3CX released a version of the 3CX Assistant optimized to the Windows Terminal Services environment, so this functionality is available to Mac and Linux users as well.

3CX provides a complete telephone system with functions such as auto-attendant, VM, call queuing, ring groups, transfer, hold, foreward, follow, and a bunch of other stuff.  The integration occurs between 3CX and Kerio at the VM level.  When a VM is left for a particular extension, an email address can be specified where a copy of the VM should be emailed (either the whole VM as an audio file, or just a VM notification).  Users then receive these in their inbox, and they can be reviewed and played from right within the PC, and most newer mobile devices.

In this first image – you will see the configuration section of the 3CX administration where you simply specify the canonical (domain) name of your mail server, or alternatively it’s IP address.

 

In this second graphic, we’re showing you the screen where you can configure how VM’s are handled for a particular users extension.

 

 

Finally, we’re showing you an actual VM message in the inbox of the user.  If caller-id is enabled the caller-id information  will be present in the message (where it says “anonymous” in this picture).

If your organization can benefit from increased efficiency, reduced cost, and simplified administration, you owe it to yourself to take a look at deploying these two products together.

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Live Webinar: Configuring Distributed Domain in Kerio Connect

Wednesday March 10, 2010 | 10:00AM PST

Kerio MailServer is now Kerio Connect – the new generation of Kerio’s messaging platform. One of the stand out new features in Kerio Connect 7 is distributed domain. This feature enables organizations with dispersed geographic locations to centrally manage mail, calendars and resource scheduling by sharing a single domain across multiple servers joined as a single geographically dispersed cluster.

In this live technical webinar, Kerio Sales engineer Mark Durant will talk about distributed domain in detail including what typical use cases are, what it is intended to do (and what it is not), and what is required to set it up, and then he’ll walk through a live configuration. This will be an interactive session, so questions are encouraged.

Learn about

• Planning for and configuring a distributed domain deployment
• Renaming a domain, assigning server roles (master/slave), and administration
• Managing users, assigning users to a server, and migrating users between servers
• Debugging the distributed domain configuration
• Important licensing requirements

Who should attend

• IT Consultants and Solution Providers
• Small Business owners/operators and IT Administrators
• Organizations with geographically dispersed locations

Presenter

Mark Durant, Sales Engineer, Kerio Technologies
Read Mark’s recent blog post on Distributed Domain.   REGISTER

Meet Kerio Connect – Webinars On Demand

Kerio is committed to sharing and teaching you what the new Kerio Connect 7 has to offer.  In an effort to provide the fastest, most economical opportunity for you to learn what makes Kerio Connect 7 tick, Kerio is featuring frequent live webinars on the most sought after information by its customers and partners.  Additionally, there is also a webinar available on Kerio’s new line of Linux-based firewall appliances.  These recent webinars have been archived and are available for review at your convenience.

Note:  If you want to download a webinar, you must also install a viewer to watch.

On-Demand Webinars

In case you missed these live webcasts, you can view them online or download.
More than email. Introducing Kerio Connect
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Mobility Simplified with Kerio Connect
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Deploy and Migrate to Kerio MailServer in Minutes
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Build a Better Firewall with Kerio’s New Linux Based Appliances
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Email Archiving: A Darn Good Idea – Even for Small Business
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